Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending Sunday 6 October 2025
Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending Sunday 6 October 2025
Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.
Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.
If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
(Semi-obligatory thanks to @dgerard for starting this)
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Hopefully this doesn’t break the rules. But where can I find some educational podcasts that aren’t overly capitalist, reactionary, rationalist, or otherwise right-leaning or authoritarian in nature.
I want to specifically avoid content like Lex Friedman, Huberman, Joe Rogan, Sam Harris. That sounds good on the surface but goes down a rabbit hole of affirming reactionary bias.
I’m not amazing with words, so I hope what I’m saying makes sense. Thanks.
Most everything from Cool Zone Media is going to be pretty decent. Haven't listened to the whole catalogue, but Ed Zitron of Better Offline is an established nonmember (as far as I know) friend of the sneer and Behind the Bastards is truly excellent.
Maintenance Phase is an excellent examination of diet and health grifters, and Mike's others (You're Wrong About and If Books Could Kill) are also pretty excellent.
I also want to spotlight Wittenburg to Westphalia, a history podcast ostensibly about the wars of the reformation and the social and economic chamges of the early modern period. But in order to really give a sense of how dramatic those changes are, he has so far provided only an incredibly thorough examination of medieval European society from the politics to economics and social structures. He has an episode about unfree labor that I found particularly interesting.
Second on Maintenance Phase! I marathonned it on a road trip a couple of days ago, and not only is it a well-researched and a fun listen, you'll discover that so much of the stuff Aubrey and Michael discuss is directly congruent to our typical subjects. Can't recommend it enough.
They've inspired me to work on an effort post for MoreWrite, tentatively titled, "A Unified Theory of Bullshitter-Driven Social Diseases."
Which isn't going to be as pompous as it sounds, I promise!
Sounds great! Looking forward to reading it
The Wittenburg podcast sounds like right up my alley, thanks for the tip!
I tend to like "Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff" more than "Behind the Bastards". Need some nugget of hope in these dark days. A lot of the cool people have been downright inspiring.
My daily podcast is "It Could Happen Here", but some other mainstays in the educational side include:
- Live Like the World is Dying
- Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness
- It's Going Down
- Final Straw Radio
- Reaction (especially liked her dives on the Pinkertons and "The Business Plot")
- Srsly Wrong [unrelated to the similarly named thing]
- The Iron Dice
- Bad Hasbara
- Frontline Herbalism if you like plants
Behind the Bastards is very easy to listen to and usually focuses on documenting the bad shit that various reactionary and fascist figures have done (in a humorous manner — the host was a writer for Cracked during its peak). a couple of the most recent episodes have covered some of the same topics we talk about in SneerClub and TechTakes, and they’re well worth a listen even if you know the subject matter well. I haven’t checked it out yet, but I think It Could Happen Here is a spin-off with the same main host that’s also broadly anti-fascist.
e: also, and I had to look this up cause I keep switching podcast apps: I Don’t Speak German is also good, and my co-admin David was on it (episode 82? I swear it was more recent than that… David were you on more than once?)
i was! ep 82 and 85
IDSG has slowed down a lot cos Daniel's got shit going on right now, but they try to do one when they can
These aren’t exactly educational but the two pods I bring up in this joint are “If Books Could Kill” and “Scam Goddess”. Again, they aren’t exactly educational but you’ll learn from them!
Some others that might work for you, mixture of informative and entertaining hosts
- Some More News
- This Machine Kills
- Never Post
- Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff
- Maintenance Phase
- You're Wrong About
If you want interesting historical deep dives, I always enjoy Dig - the history podcast. Well researched by actual scholars, which goes hand in hand with the episodes not dropping that often.